One wonders if the head of Britain’s Intelligence Service is proud of his grandfather’s role in ending British rule in most of Ireland
BRITAIN’S new spy-chief, Richard Moore, has a rather interesting connection with this country. His grandfather, a Corkman, was a member of the Irish Republican Army!
A career diplomat and senior British intelligence officer, Richard Moore has been appointed head gaffer of MI6 but, interestingly, last week a British newspaper revealed that his grandfather, Jack Buckley, played an important part in the Irish War of Independence as an IRA combatant.
As such, he was entitled to the 1919-1921 medal (often referred to as the ‘Black & Tan medal’), and the 1921-1971 Anniversary Medal, which commemorate the IRA’s revolutionary activities in the fight for freedom.
Whether the head of Britain’s Intelligence Service is proud of his grandfather’s role in ending British rule in most of Ireland is probably a State secret, but let’s hope that in private he enjoys a quiet satisfaction and sense of pride in his achievements.
Currently, Richard Moore is the political director of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office and soon will become director of MI6, also known as the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS).
Of course, James Bond fans will spot that he’s filling the boots of the fictional ‘C’. In fact, he’ll hold the position of Director-General of the Joint Security Service, which is an amalgam of MI5 (the UK’s domestic intelligence section) and MI6 (the UK’s foreign intelligence section).
IRA connection
Richard Moore joined MI6 in 1987 but left the service to take the role of embassy press attaché in dodgy places, such as Vietnam, Pakistan and Malaysia, before being appointed UK ambassador to Turkey.
Whether or not he was at that time a clandestine MI6 officer is a State secret, of course!
Interestingly, the British media, including the BBC, failed to notice the historical IRA connection with Richard Moore’s relative, an honoured freedom fighter who helped liberate most of his country from the claws of Perfidious Albion.
Happily, the omission was remedied by Sinn Féin’s Danny Morrison, who informed the world of the participation of grandfather Jack Buckley in Ireland’s struggle against the British Empire and that his grandson, Richard Moore, happened to be a head honcho in Britain’s premier spy agency, MI6.
War on terror
Probably the new Spy Chief will be kept busy justifying MI6’s controversial intelligence gathering activities relating to the ‘war on terror,’ which – as far as Britain’s ally, America, is concerned – involves kidnapping, false imprisonment and the torture of ‘detainees.’
Particularly controversial is the abduction and extrajudicial transfer of a person from one country to another.
Indeed we hope that Richard Moore’s employers (MI6) will have read the 2018 British Parliamentary Report by the Intelligence and Security Committee which found the United Kingdom to be complicit in ‘renditions’ carried out by the US (The United Nations considers the abduction of a citizen of one nation by the government of another to be a crime against humanity).
The report concluded that Britain was supplying the Americans with intelligence and funding to enable the kidnappings and subsequent torture of abducted victims. (Indeed, with regard to political kidnappings, this country hardly can take satisfaction in the way America has turned Shannon Airport into a stopover point for rendition flights. It’s a horror that Irish politicians – to their shame – refuse to confront.)
Nor should we forget the MI5 and MI6 spies and informants who are based in the North and who consider Ireland’s geographical position and neutrality a prime area in which intelligence agents can operate.
Such as the former spy, ‘Ingram/Grantham’, who spent ten years as a ‘handler’ while being a senior member of the Force Research Unit, a very controversial branch of British Military Intelligence!
Nor should the collusion in the North between MI5, the British Army’s undercover Force Research Unit (FRU) and Loyalist monsters who provided information that was used to slaughter Catholics, be forgotten.
Islamic threat
Currently, it is the Islamic threat that is focussing conspiratorial minds, north and south, particularly since one of the London Bridge attackers lived for some time with his English partner in the Rathmines area of South Dublin. Unfortunately his presence and the terrorist danger he posed did not come under the radar of Garda surveillance.
Whether or not the new Minister for Justice, Helen McEntee, is concerned that foreign spying agencies are operating in Ireland (including Israel’s vile Mossad), the policy within the Department of Justice is for co-operation with international agencies on ‘security matters’ when combatting crime. Presumably that includes Richard Moore’s MI6 .
And, since it’s no secret that MI6 provides information to assist the Garda Special Detective Unit (SDU) in its surveillance of people considered to be posing a potential threat to this part of the island, perhaps Richard Moore might help bring to justice the perpetrators of the deadliest atrocity in the history of the State, the 1974 Dublin and Monaghan bombings?
The May ’74 bombings
In Dublin, the rush-hour massacre killed 33 people, including a mother who was nine-months pregnant, and injured more than 300. In Monaghan one person was murdered. Although the atrocities were attributed to loyalist paramilitaries, up to now there has been little appetite to find the culprits.
This has led to persistent allegations of high level British collusion in the attacks and of possible involvement by MI6.
Don Mullan, author of ‘The Dublin and Monaghan Bombings,’ rightly says that the killings constitute the biggest unsolved murder case in the Irish State and ‘the greatest loss of life in any one day of the so-called Troubles.’ But he also points to the suspected involvement of British military intelligence in assisting Loyalist paramilitaries to place the no-warning bombs.
